Race Car Game

Ok I am currently making a race car game for my computer class. I have two cars racing. One car is controlled by the computer and the other is controlled by the user. Making the computer drive the car around the track is easy and doesn't require much work but making the other car interactive has caused me problems. The only problem I seem to have is that When creating an event to control the car with the arrow keys, the car moves at a sluggish speed... and it needs to be much quicker. I also tried writing the move commands as methods and then making them events, but the problem there is you cant just hold down the up arrow key and go forward but you have to type the key each time. Any Ideas how I could make controls for the cars with the arrow keys that avoid these problems?